Isn't it amazing how quickly time flies? Having waited a whole year for the 2013 British Independent film Awards, they have come and gone so quickly that it's as if they didn't happen.

In the Raindance office we joke that the Christmas season officially starts the day after the BIFAs. Looking ahead to the New Year there are a host of new innovations and big game changers that our fabulous intern, Tekle Baroti has put into a succinct and entertaining article so good that I wish I had thought of it.

I hear all the time about how British films lose money, how independent filmmaking is dead, and that British films aren't half as good as the films made on the continent.

But is that true?

One thing that is certain: I and the entire Raindance Film Festival team will be glued to our seats at this Sunday's British Independent Film Awards. Why? Because we think British film is the toast of the continent right now.

When this year's Raindance Film Festival launched Britain's first web fest 'way back in September 2013, film industry eyeballs rolled and rolled.

But the success of the webfest, both in terms of audience engagement and content proved to me at least that web series are here to stay. Then just this week Harvey Weinstein announced he was funding a TV series: Ten Commandments for television. Not exactly a web series, but a series that most in America will watch online courtesy of Netflix.

Then out of the blue comes a terrific summary of how and why the web series is going from internet consultant and online researcher, Jo Geaney.

Sunday morning, December 1st, I was jolted out of my daydream by my sobbing Florida intern Shannon Hemmings breaking the news to me that her favourite actor had just died in a car crash. "Would I like her to write a tribute article for our website?" she asked.

Although I have never been a fan of The Fast & The Furious I did agree, because Shannon was so passionate about it.

At 1:30pm the article arrived, and I shoved it onto our website, sent out a tweet to the @Raindance and posted a short note on Facebook. I totally forgot about it until 7pm when I was doing a sneaky catchup on my emails and noticed that nearly 300 people were looking at the www.raindance.org website.

To cut a long story short, over 125,000 people read Shannon's article over the next 48 hours, crashing our site repeatedly and clogging our emails. All that traffic came from those two postings. I just looked at the page now and it's had over 13,000 Facebook likes. Wow.

While getting traffic to one's website is the goal of every internet marketeer, and an indie filmmaker's wet dream, this one has definately backfired in the busy busy run up to this weekend's British Independent Film Awards (we founded the BIFA's, remember?). Do I wish I had never agreed to this popst. Tyhe better part of three days now with no emails and only a partially operating website.